


The Femme Fatale Grand Illusion

by NeoVenus22



Category: The Middleman (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:43:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeoVenus22/pseuds/NeoVenus22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lobster isn't the only thing worth leaving the house for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Femme Fatale Grand Illusion

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: 1x07, 'The Cursed Tuba Contingency'

"Hey, Lacey," Noser drawled, as Lacey Thornfield's sublet door swung open and shut, and she stepped out with her skirt swirling around her thighs.

"Hey, Noser." She and Wendy always greeted Noser the same way, the call-and-answer that was the trademark of the sixth floor hallway. But Lacey always did it in a way that bordered on radiantly cheerful. She was fierce causal devotion and an indomitable spirit topped with blond curls. Not that he noticed.

"I can hear you crying," he informed her, hand gripping the neck of his guitar a little more tightly than usual. "You're so scared and all alone."

"Any other night, I might say that the hangman is coming down from the gallows, and that I don't have very long," she said. She was never quite as quick on the draw as Wendy was, but he never much minded.

"Any other night?"

"Tonight I might be a little bit scared, but I am most assuredly no longer about to be alone."

She was positively beaming, and Noser found himself quitting the game, something he almost never did. "All dressed up with someplace to go?"

"There's a movie I'm thinking of seeing."

"Anything in particular?" He eyed the cut of the dress, something Wendy had once declared to be 'achieving maximum cleavage'. "Anyone in particular?"

"A lady never kisses and tells, Noser."

"So kissing took place."

"Hasn't. Might. Hoping." Her expression could only be described as the starry-eyed dreaminess of a young teen girl crushing hard on a boyband. Actually, he'd seen that expression, too. He half expected her to bat her eyes and cross her fingers, not that either of those were Lacey Thornfield mannerisms.

Noser had nothing to say to that, really. Not that Lacey seemed to mind, floating to the elevator on clouds of her equivalent of adolescent lustful glee.

* * *

Two days later, he sensed a presence at his door and opened it to see Lacey's paused pre-knock fist and impish smile. "What are you doing tonight?"

Noser braced himself against the door frame, wishing he had something to put in his hands. "Sounds to me like I'm going wherever you take me."

"Which happens to be a wonderfully gaudy ocean liner that's three feet longer than the _Queen Mary_ and eighty-six feet longer than the _Titanic_," she said. "With a lobster dinner, if you're into the whole blatant boiling of innocent crustaceans for your buttery, fatty needs."

Noser's morals were somewhat against it, but his palette was very much for it. And a musical genius self-producing his own concept album was not generally in the position of affording a tasty lobster dinner, morals or no morals. "Is this going to be black tie?"

"Clip-ons need not apply," said Lacey cheerfully.

"And how, exactly, did you come across such riches?"

"I figured my connections with Dr. Barbara Thornfield, M.D., Ph.D., had to come in handy sometime. I was getting Dub-Dub all dolled up for this event, and it seemed like fun, so I pulled some strings, as they say."

"Wendy Watson is going to a cruise ship shindig?"

"A short dinner cruise around the bay, for _Titanic_ enthusiasts," she confirmed, but that wasn't the part that Noser was concerned about. "And just how exactly did _she_ come across such riches?"

Lacey shrugged but didn't meet his eyes. "Temping."

"So this is going to involve Wendy's boss," realized Noser with the tiniest of sighs.

"He... may or may not be there," she hedged. "...In a tuxedo."

"Is it still considered confrontational spoken word performance art if it's stalking? It's not always spoken and rarely ends up well if it's confrontational, and while it's something of a performance, I don't think it technically qualifies as art. Unless it's super-bad art."

"No, what Pip pushes out of his rear and calls genius is super-bad art. This is a far cry." Just as delusional, though. "Besides, this isn't stalking. It's... coincidence." Lacey raised her chin defiantly, daring him to call her bluff.

"Just like it was coincidence when you wandered out of here in a date dress the night before?"

"Noser, are you coming to this high seas hootenanny or not?"

"I thought it was just a short dinner cruise around the bay," he said. Lacey stared. "I'll be there."

* * *

Lacey returned to his doorstep an hour later, decked out in red like the siren she didn't know she was. "Wendy's boss is definitely going to reconsider when he sees that number," he said. He tried not to get jealous. He also tried not to get too imaginative, picturing Lacey nestled in the crook of Wendy's boss's arm, the two a perfect pair of a bad-ass, crime-fighting super-couple. Noser banished the imagine and called to mind LP cover art. He was considering using Belgian surrealism for his own concept album.

"Reconsider what?" said Lacey, her bright smile faltering in wattage only slightly. Noser had meant it as a compliment, but wires had gotten crossed, apparently, and now it was a seed of doubt, unintentionally planted.

And therein lay Noser's dilemma. He could fan the fires of Lacey's hope, and end up as the third wheel at some nautical soiree to watch her fawn over the mystery man in olive green? Or put voice to the nugget of a notion deep-frying itself in his brain, the one that suggested Wendy and the boss man's relationship might be a step beyond employer and employee?

"Reconsider sending you home all early and sad-faced," he said finally. Fan the hope fires it was. A miserable Lacey led to a miserable Noser, anyway. "What kind of man makes the lovely lady Lacey that desolate, anyway?"

"How do you know that Pillow Lips isn't just a gentleman who believes in getting a full night's sleep?" she said, but her smile faltered.

"If you say so."

"I do say so. Now," she grabbed his tux-clad elbow and looped her arm through his, "we have some floating festivities to attend."

* * *

"Just the salad, thank you," Lacey said, smiling tightly at the waitress, her voice an odd mixture of respect for someone of the service industry, an industry of which she'd been a member for a mere but grueling day, and condensation for anyone who would dare to murder crustaceans for oral gratification. Noser tapped his thumb against his fork in eager anticipation, eyes not nearly as big as his stomach or as the collection of drool pooling in his mouth as a succulent lobster dinner came off the cart.

"I just wanted you to know that I won't hold your meat-lust against you, any more than I hold Wendy's insistence on using non-organic oil paints against her," said Lacey, digging into her leaves with zeal.

"Shellfish-lust," said Noser, nonplussed, taking his first transcendent bite. It was almost (almost) enough to distract him from Lacey's not-yet-voiced but increasing hysteria that Wendy had not-so-gently encouraged them to leave, then had wandered off with her boss in formalwear. "So when does the big tuba show kick off?"

"I don't know. Have you seen Wendy since she asked us to get out of here? It's like she and Pillow Lips just vanished."

And there it was, the big ol' stinkbomb of paranoia, threatening to ruin both his good mood and the incomparable deliciousness of seafood on his tongue. "It's a big ship," he said. "Maybe they don't want to be found."

"Thanks a lot, Noser," she pouted. It occurred to Noser that the idea of Wendy Watson and Wendy Watson's boss doing not-bossly things was not an idea solely paying rent in Noser's brain, but couch-surfing to several cerebellums.

"Did I just see a flash of jealousy streak across that pretty face?" he asked, a weak attempt at damage control.

"Why would you think I'm jealous?"

"You call the man Pillow Lips." Pillow Lips was not the sort of nickname one gave to someone platonic (unless it was a very disturbing and psychologically questionable platonic relationship), it was the sort of name one gave as the result of unquenchable non-shellfish-lust for a perplexing individual whose name one didn't know, to the point where one had to assign defining characteristics in a sad attempt at feigning closeness.

Lacey tossed down her napkin. "You know what? I've always wanted to see the cabins in a ship like this," she said, and stormed off as elegantly as a woman in period dress attending a lush dinner party on a cruise ship three feet longer than the _Queen Mary_ and eighty-six feet longer than the _Titanic_ was expected to.

Noser sighed. The gentlemanly thing to do was to pick up his tails, put down his fork, and follow his not-date into the bowels of said cruise ship, so he could calm her down and ease her mind of the worries he'd somewhat inadvertently brought to the forefront. He gazed at his lobster forlornly, knowing there would be no romance for either him nor his taste buds today. "And I always wanted to finish a lobster dinner."

When he caught up with her, Lacey was stalking down the hallway as well as anyone could stalk in a skirt like that.

"Hey, Lacey."

"Hey, Noser." If his tone held a version of apology, hers held a version of acceptance and/or forgiveness. It was about to be a nice moment, until her handbag beeped.

"Bet it's Wendy Watson, calling to say she got lost in the bowels of the ship."

Lacey examined her phone. "No, it's from Wendy's boss. But yes, he's lost in the bowels of the ship."

Noser ignored coincidence in favor of the more interesting half of her statement. "And just where did Wendy's boss get your number?"

"Is that really important, Noser? Dub-Dub and Pillow Lips need our help."

"Does Wendy know about this?"

"If she's in trouble, then I'm pretty sure she knows she needs help. Whether or not from us, I don't know, but I'd rank us pretty high. If only based on cunning and proximity."

"I meant if she knows about your clandestine rendezvous with the man who signs her paychecks."

Lacey's pout suggested that Wendy Watson in fact did not know about this. "Well, he's not going to be able to sign her paychecks much longer if we don't help him out, will he?"

As ever, Lacey on a mission, be it to liberate goldfish from an inconveniently-located pet store next to a Red Lobster, or to liberate a near-stranger from uncertain doom on a nice dinner cruise around the bay, was an unstoppable force.

* * *

There were two certainties Noser knew of that evening. The first certainty being that dancing with Lacey was immeasurably better than a lobster dinner. Well worth the price of admission of taking his tux out of storage and not getting to use an axe. In the course of their friendship, Noser had touched Lacey for roughly a thousand different reasons, varying in intimacy. But this was the first dance, and they moved well.

The second certainty being that she would much rather have been with Wendy's boss. He knew that on his own without help, although the point was illustrated to him when he asked, "May I?" and Lacey's eyes went wide and starry. Noser obligingly spun her over, and watched as she hastened to close the inches between herself and boss man that she had never once considered closing between herself and Noser himself.

"Hey, Wendy Watson."

"Hey, Noser." Wendy gave him a half-hearted smile over a half-empty glass of something full alcoholic.

"So you do you think your life is complete confusion?"

"Because my neighbors got it made?"

"Just remember that it's a grand illusion, Wendy Watson."

"Whatever you tell yourself to get through the day."

"And what do you tell yourself?" he asked, eying her curiously.

Wendy paused to give this consideration. "That it's all worth it in the end." She gestured the glass at him vaguely. "What do you tell yourself?"

He could have been unfailingly honest, baring his soul to the sort of person who understood soul-bearing. Instead, Noser went for complete but unrelated truth. "That the band cannot be stumped."

Wendy laughed. "No, no it cannot. More power to you, Noser." She looked at him with big doe eyes, ones that were filled with a wisdom he couldn't comprehend. "Why don't you get yourself some lobster while you still can?"

But even from here, Noser could see the glisten of Lacey's tears. "A delicious seafood dinner only fills the hole in one's stomach."

He could feel Wendy's stare on him, so after a moment's hesitation, he returned it. The girl was definitely looking pained, but for an altogether different reason than Lacey's pain or Noser's pain. All of his suspicions were thusly squashed flat. Wendy Watson and Wendy Watson's boss were definitely not doing not-bossly things. That aside, she maybe knew a lot more than she led on. He was beginning to think this was a pattern.

Somehow, though, Noser didn't think that Lacey would take the small consolation of Wendy's obvious distress as the gift it was. "Damage control," he said, to no one in particular, and went over to rescue the most sad-eyed girl on the dance floor.

"So, is Wendy's boss still a man interested in getting a good night's sleep?" he asked, looping his arm around her waist at a safe, platonic, no-nicknames-here distance.

Lacey, to her infinite credit, fell into step with him. As a reward, Noser steered her closer to the corner.

"I guess we're going home early, Noser. A good night's sleep is in order, for tonight, and for the rest of my life."

"Bummer," he said succinctly.

"You have a gift for understatement."

"I have a gift for other things, too," he said. "Like taking sad confrontational spoken word performance artists home after a bad night, and encouraging them to stump the band."

Lacey smiled. "The band cannot be stumped."

"That's what I tell myself to get through the day."

"Anything else?"

Wendy Watson was remarkably wise, he thought, and smiled at beautiful siren Lacey, who was so cynical about some things, and so innocently optimistic about others. Noser hardly believed that this night was the end of the saga, but he could only hope it could mark a beginning. "I tell myself that it's all worth it in the end."


End file.
